It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And by "it" I don't mean Paris and London in the late 18th century; I'm talking about tonight's Knicks-Lakers game.
We've already spilled lots of digital ink on the Lakers, whose injuries and poor depth have them 9-13 entering tonight and in danger of missing the playoffs entirely. But what of the Knickerbockers? They're perhaps the most positive story in the league, with a 1.5-game lead in the Eastern Conference, two routs of Miami and an attractive flowing style that has produced an avalanche of open 3-pointers.
What's so amazing is how unlikely all this was. The idea of such a joyous brand of basketball emanating from MSG's poisoned tower seemed almost laughable until, well, the season began and it started happening. As recently as a year ago, they had basically driven a truck over the Linsanity era, then backed over it a few times for good measure -- all so we could go back to watching more Carmelo Anthony isolations and try to justify owner James Dolan's insane, meddling decisions on big-picture moves.
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But while owner Dolan and his minions at MSG had visions of riding a my-turn, your-turn offense to glory behind Amar'e Stoudemire and Anthony, they inadvertently hired a few people with different ideas to build their basketball team. Those people, most notably Glen Grunwald, Allan Houston and Mark Warkentien, kept finding 3-point shooters, ball handlers and defenders to complement their oddly fitting centerpieces. As a result, even after Linsanity died down and the Knicks returned to iso-heavy drabness last spring, they were able to play some decent basketball.
And, as always with stories like this one, fortune intervened and smiled upon them. Stoudemire's knee injury forced the Knicks to make the one move they had been stubbornly resisting: moving Anthony to the starting power forward spot -- where he had always put up much better numbers -- while taking Stoudemire's LOL defense out of the equation.
Suddenly, the Knicks were a juggernaut. Anthony as a power forward has been a revelation, finally cashing in on his potential by ranking sixth in the league in PER and shooting 3s at a career-best 44.9 percent clip. The latter figure, a 10-point improvement on his career norms, stems largely because the pick-and-pop chances he gets from this position are much cleaner looks than the iso stuff he relied on as a small forward. Melo has been credited with greater esprit de corps too, although in reality his assist rate is at a career low and barely half what it was last season. The big story here is that his shots are going in, particularly his 3-pointers.
As for not having Stoudemire? That hasn't been much of a problem because New York has surrounded Anthony with a flotilla of long-range bombers who make double-teaming him a punishing experience. As long as Stoudemire isn't playing, New York usually has three 3-point shooters on the court and a devastating dive man in Tyson Chandler. Six different Knicks average more than three 3-point tries a game; as a team New York is making 40.9 percent while attempting more than 29 a game -- both league-leading figures.
In fact, the Knicks take nearly 50 percent more 3-pointers than the league average as a percentage of their attempts (see chart), a rate that blows away even that of the second-place Rockets.
Bombs Away
Most 3-point attempts per field-goal attempt, 2012-13
Team 3A/FGA
New York .352
Houston .319
L.A. Lakers .295
Brooklyn .280
Atlanta .277
League average .241
The crazy part is that the best shooter among them, Mr. Discount Doublecheck Steve Novak, is barely getting warmed up -- his 42.3 percent mark on triples is still awesome, but pales beside the 48.5 percent he made over the previous two seasons. But New York has made up for it partly because of an out-of-body experience from Jason Kidd (52.2 percent!), partly because Anthony is shooting so well from the power forward spot and partly because they've added so many other shooters to the party.
(Side note: Tonight's announcers will fawn over Kidd's improvement as a long-range shooter over the course of his career, since this apparently has become a requirement in recent years. It hasn't happened nearly to the extent folks would like to think. As a second-year pro in Dallas in 1995-96 he shot 33.6 percent on 3s; as a world champion in Dallas in 2010-11 he shot 34 percent. In between he had a couple of blips in the low 40s (1996-97, 2009-10) but every time, all roads led back to 35 percent. The only thing that has changed is he shoots almost exclusively 3s now because he can't get to the rim anymore. So what I'm saying is: Take this 38-of-72 start by Kidd with a few grains of salt. I'm guessing the previous sample of 5,376 attempts will win out.)
The underrated part of this is not just that the Knicks found shooters on the cheap -- Novak off waivers, Rasheed Wallace wallowing in retirement, along with Kidd and Pablo Prigioni as inexpensive free agents. It's that they found ball handlers too.
Creators usually don't come cheap, and Anthony is certainly an example. But New York now has two legitimate pick-and-roll creators making less than $4 million in J.R. Smith and Raymond Felton. Smith is crazy talented, and although the "crazy" sometimes outweighs the "talented," the sum of his package is that he creates a ton of shots off the dribble with the second unit. And many of them are high-quality looks.
Felton, meanwhile, has rebounded from a disastrous year in Portland by getting in better shape and sharply cutting his turnovers. New York's system gives him a little more space too, which is very helpful -- Felton's tendency with the Blazers was to cram a pocket pass past four sets of hands and starting a two-on-one the other way. Also, with New York he's able to throw his pocket pass 2 feet above the rim and have Chandler slam it home -- as one of the league's best dive men, Chandler's dunk threat creates a lot of open 3s on the weak side. As a result, he has been reborn as a pick-and-roll creator, and when the ball swings back to him he's shooting 40.4 percent on 3s.
It all fits together, in other words, in a way that seemed almost unimaginable to those who watched the uneasy anti-chemistry between Stoudemire and Anthony a year ago.
Somewhere in all this, Mike Woodson played a huge role as well, and he's as unlikely a participant in all this as Anthony. Woodson had always been lauded for his work out of timeouts in Atlanta, but in Atlanta he was an orthodox practitioner of Larry Brown tenets who usually preferred big lineups and isolations. His experience is a reminder that coaches can and do get better; he has borrowed liberally from Mike D'Antoni and others to create a slick-passing, ball-moving machine.
As a result, New York leads all East teams in offensive efficiency and ranks a close second overall behind the Oklahoma City juggernaut, an offensive bonanza that has more than offset the defensive cost of their system -- a 16th-ranked D that too often depends on Chandler bailing out beaten defenders.
So dare to dream, rest of the NBA, because a magical season is erupting from the most unlikely of places. No, the Knicks may not keep up some of these individual numbers all season, but take a step back and the big picture is very much for real. This is a legitimate threat to the Heat in the Eastern Conference, thanks to a beautiful, floor-spacing offensive attack that somehow, some way, has sprung from all the insanity (with no L) at MSG.
